Chapter Text
BY KRISTOFF BJORGMAN – STAFF
ATLANTICA– Children wearing nautical striped shirts squinted against the afternoon sun along Sea Shore Avenue as parents stopped to peer along shelves of watercolors and acrylics during the Atlantica Art Walk’s last hurrah before the coming of autumn. Local artists lingering just behind shoulders or under the shade of trees and awnings, booths and stalls set up between shops and idle before store windows.
“It shore is a great day so far!” Ariel Grimsby, coordinator, said with a laugh. “Everyone is always so friendly and enthusiastic and we’re so fortunate to have such a gorgeous day, weather wise. As long as storm doesn’t start brewing,” Mrs. Grimsby paused and knocked against the wooden doorframe to her side, “we’re golden.”
Mrs. Grimsby’s mother, Athena Benson began the event twenty-five years earlier as a means for artists all over Yensid to showcase their work.
“Elsa Rendell from Arendelle is here with her snowflake paintings, I convinced Mr. and Mrs. Frederickson with the threat of tears to join us this year and even James Hawkins– though he’s not a painter–agreed to drop by,” Mrs. Grimsby said. “The day’s not even over– but I can’t wait for next year!”
Kristoff lounged at the unfamiliar desk, feet propped up between the telephone and typewriter with his hands behind his head. He looked up at the slanted windows overlooking the expanse of October country: scarlet and orange leaves like flames, coloring the otherwise plain office in shades of autumn.
“I promise I won’t be too long,” Sven had said the week before, stuffing shirts into a suitcase. “And Arendelle is quiet anyway. The most exciting thing that’s happened in the last four years was when the mayor found his missing daughter.”
“I thought that was in Corona,” Kristoff had said, grinning from across the matchbox apartment they shared, straddling a backwards facing chair.
“You catch my drift.”
Kristoff couldn’t begrudge Sven: Arendelle was quiet. Boring quiet. A glance at the community calendar to his right showed a food drive at the local library and a ribbon cutting for a new Westergaard shop in the upcoming weeks. Turning up the pages of the mostly white boxes, he saw that perhaps the biggest event, the Open Door Gala, wasn’t until the second week of December.
If it hadn’t been for the weekend shift, Kristoff probably would not have needed to even come to the office for production.
“Ooh, how I envy you Arendelle.”
Jane Porter, British, brunette and very becoming, stopped by Kristoff’s new(ish) desk on her way out. She wore a flattering yellow shirtwaist dress with an open lavender collar, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She propped a fist against her hip, a camera hanging from around her neck.
“I’ve got hunters bumbling about on a wildlife preservation and their stupid representative can’t even answer his bloody phone,” she said. “And Sven played bridge last week for two hours with a woman turning 100.”
Kristoff raised a brow. “Why don’t you just barge into his office, then?” he said. “Demand some answers or so help him, you’ll pen a sensational expose on him for next week’s edition?”
Jane rolled her eyes and blew her hair back from her face, slumping with her hip against the edge of his desk.
“Last time I did that, I was escorted off the premises and warned that if I ever pulled something like that again, I’d be issued a restraining order,” she said.
“They can’t do that.”
“Ah, but they did,” she said with a half-smile.
Kristoff snorted. “Well, if it helps any, I’m still covering the North Mountain, too.”
Jane rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. “Oh, please,” she said. “You took up all of half a page last week. The only reason they hired you to write for North Mountain was because you were already working as a ranger there.”
“Guilty as charged.” He motioned toward the camera. “What’s happening?”
“The Westergaards are opening another store downtown,” she said, crossing her eyes. “My God, this is probably their tenth one in just as many months.”
Kristoff glanced at Sven’s–his–calendar again. “I think I’ve got one of those coming up, too,” he said. “Maybe we should put together a double truck. Compile every opening and celebrate it for them.”
Jane laughed. “I’ll bring the champagne.”
The telephone gave a sudden shrill and Kristoff jumped. He put his feet down off the desk in a hurry and reached for the candlestick as Jane offered a salute before turning away. Fitting the earpiece against his outer ear while pulling the rest of the phone close enough for his breath to fog against the black polish, felt unnatural. No one called up at North Mountain.
“Hello?”
“Is this Sven Fjord?” A woman asked, her voice low and rushed.
“No. Sven’s on– leave, I guess. This is Kristoff Bjorgman.”
“Oh. Well. I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she said and hesitated only a moment before forging ahead. “I need to report a missing person.”
Kristoff looked around at the mostly empty office. Milo Thatch from letters and obits still lingered, but hardly seemed the right person to ask for advice. “I think you need to call the police about that first,” he said instead.
“I have,” she said. “The police are aware but– well. It won’t make it into any papers unless someone asks about it.”
Kristoff frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone’s been told to keep this on the down low so as to not cause a scandal,” she said. “But it’s not necessarily a secret– at least, I don’t think it should be a secret– so someone just has to ask the right questions.”
“And what are the right questions?”
She laughed then, a breathy, frantic sound over the tinny line. “That was one,” she said, then turned somber. “A woman disappeared from her home three nights ago at around 6:45ish in the evening. Identify her– and you’ve got one heck of a scoop.”
She hung up before Kristoff could get another word in.
Several desks down, Milo adjusted his glasses, not looking up from the text wedged between a lamp and half a sandwich.
“From this end that sounded pretty cryptic,” he said. “I can’t imagine how it must’ve sounded on your end.”
Kristoff squeezed the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes for a moment. Despite being just short of promised that his ride with Arendelle would be a smooth one, a mysterious phone call concerning more excitement than the office had seen in perhaps three years didn’t surprise him as much as it should have. Part of him felt like he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Sven planned this,” he murmured, shuffling through loose papers until he found an index of numbers in the second drawer to the right, under a bag of moldy baby carrots. Fingers catching in the dial, he rang the Arendelle Police Department.
“This is Olaf.”
Kristoff started. “Hello, my name’s Kristoff, I’m a reporter for Yensid Weekly. I um. Had a few questions regarding a missing person?”
“Missing person?” Olaf said, exclaiming more than questioning. “Huh, I’m gone for four days and I’m already out of the loop. They don’t tell me anything anymore.”
Kristoff listened to papers shuffling for a moment before continuing. “I got an anonymous tip about a woman disappearing three days ago around 6:45 in the evening?”
“Six forty-five,” Olaf repeated, dragging out the vowels as the phone jostled against his ear, papers and cloth running over the mouthpiece before he shouted another exclamation. “Found it! Wow, they sure dumped it at the very bottom of this pile. Okay! Yes, Tuesday, October the thirteenth, a twenty-five year old female vanished from her home on Cobblestone Way at approximately six-forty five. Hans Westergaard reported the incident that evening…”
Kristoff looked up from his hurried scribbles in the stenographer notebook, black ink smudging against his wrist. “Wait, Hans Westergaard reported the missing person?” He hesitated and glanced at his calendar where an upcoming Tuesday was circled in red pencil, “Westergaard Ribbon Cutting” written in Sven’s careful hand. “Exactly who is missing?” he asked, sitting up straighter.
Olaf missed a beat, breath catching in what might have been surprise. “Well,” he said. “It’s Miss Elsa Rendell.”